﻿﻿Roger M McCoyRoger M McCoy In 1844, Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary of the Admiralty, planned one more effort to find the Northwest Passage before his imminent retirement. Any ambitious naval officer would have been eager to lead such an expedition. After lengthy consideration of their experienced officers, the Admiralty chose Sir John Franklin, leader of two prior expeditions (Explorer’s Tales, 9/2/2015) , to plan and execute this expedition. The ships Erebus and Terror were refitted with railroad steam engines as an aid in pushing through ice-choked waters when winds were calm or adverse. Franklin claimed, with questionable wisdom, that twenty-horsepower steam engines could be installed along with the necessary coal without destroying the ships’ capacity for stores and provisions. They installed screw-type propellers that could be raised out of the water while the ships were under sail. An enormous amount of planning and ship refitting went into the preparations. In all there were to be 129 officers and men aboard the two ships, with provisions and supplies for three years, including ample supplies of lemon juice, canned vegetables, and canned meat. The inevitable infamous sea biscuit steadfastly remained, baked months in advance by naval bakeries and were often infested with weevil larvae by the time they were loaded on the ship. (French ships reportedly carried flour and baked their bread on board.) It was without doubt the most thoroughly prepared expedition up to that time. An interesting aside is that the Terror took part in the British bombings of Fort McHenry in the Battle of Baltimore in 1814, during which Francis Scott Key wrote a poem about the flag that was still there. On May 19, 1845 the two ships sailed down the Thames to begin the most elaborately planned and provisioned expedition ever to search for the Northwest Passage. The exploration of the Arctic had captured the interest of the British public but this expedition, perhaps more than any other, carried the aspirations and best wishes of all Britain. The men of the expedition had complete confidence in Franklin because of his past experience and good rapport with his officers. The ships had everything deemed necessary for a successful voyage, and failure seemed impossible. Near the end of July,1845 two British whaling ships reported sighting the Erebus and Terror progressing westward in Baffin Bay in excellent condition, but the ships and men of the Franklin expedition were never seen again.

The Search Begins Sir John Ross, a naval officer with Arctic experience, expressed his misgivings about the suitability of the Erebus and Terror before Franklin had even departed in 1845. Ross’s previous heroic experience with Arctic survival led him to believe the two ships were too large, the drafts too deep (nineteen feet), the crews were too large (a potential problem if short rations became necessary), the steam engines and coal added too much weight, making them ride low in the water, and the steam engines and coal took space that could better be used for provisions. Ross’s convictions on these issues prompted him to advise Franklin to leave frequent cairns along the way with notes telling his intended direction of travel, and to leave food caches at intervals in case he should lose the ships and have to walk out as Ross had done. Further, he told Franklin that he would be prepared to lead a rescue party if Franklin’s whereabouts were not known by February, 1847. All these well-founded misgivings were ignored by both Franklin and the Admiralty in their conviction that they had made all the best decisions. Optimism ruled everyone’s thinking, and the Admiralty felt they had planned a fail-proof expedition. In the spring of 1848 the expedition was declared missing and a large search and rescue project began from three directions. Two ships, the Enterprise under James Ross and Investigator under Edward Bird approached from the east into Lancaster Sound. One ship, under the command of Captain Henry Kellett, was sent around Cape Horn to approach through Bering Strait. Richardson and Rae traveled overland down the Mackenzie River and eastward along the coast looking for signs of Franklin. Unsurprisingly they found nothing. The route Franklin was expected to have taken two years earlier was blocked by ice when the searchers arrived, so they assumed Franklin could not have gone that route. Unfortunately, the naval officers were not yet familiar with significant year-to-year variations in the location of ice floes during the summer season. The result was that they initially searched only in ice-free areas—most of which were not part of Franklin’s planned route. The Admiralty was considering ending the search when pressure from naval officers persuaded them to prolong the search. In the spring of 1850 a veritable armada of ships set out to look for Franklin, and the Admiralty offered a prize of £20,000 for the rescue of Franklin and £10,000 for finding his ships. Two ships approached the Arctic from the west through Bering Strait and thirteen ships made an eastern approach into Lancaster Sound. One ship was financed by Lady Jane Franklin, along with private subscriptions, and two American ships joined the fleet. All they found were three graves on Beechey Island, next to Devon Island, with names of men known to be part of Franklin’s crew. At that site searchers also found a quantity of empty food containers suggesting a layover during the expedition’s first winter. They found rock cairns that strangely contained no message indicating where the ships might have gone. At the end of summer most of the search ships stayed through the winter for another attempt the following summer. Lady Jane Franklin differed with the Admiralty on the likely place to look for Franklin, pressing them to expand the search south of Lancaster Sound where the expedition originally intended to go. The Admiralty repeatedly sent expeditions to the north and west, even though they were unlikely to find Franklin by repeating the same mistake. It made no difference to her that on January 19, 1854 the British Government officially pronounced the men of the expedition dead. She was determined to find them dead or alive, in part to vindicate her husband as the one who completed the Northwest Passage. Lady Jane spent much of her personal money on three unsuccessful expeditions searching for her husband. She was frustrated that so many ships were sent in what she thought was the wrong direction. Ultimately her intuition proved to be right. In 1857 Lady Jane arranged for Francis Leopold M’Clintock to sail the Fox, a ship she financed with £2,000 of her own money plus public subscription. M’Clintock knew the techniques for overland travel and survival in the Arctic, and his skills and persistence helped him learn what had happened to the Franklin expedition. In Part 3 we will see the ghastly outcome of M’Clintock’s search.

Franklin's routes for his first and second overland expeditions. Hudson Bay is off the map to the right.

﻿﻿﻿Roger M McCoy﻿﻿﻿

In 1819 the Royal Navy undertook exploration of the Canadian Arctic, and the Admiralty selected Lieutenant John Franklin to command a land expedition to the uncharted Arctic coast. His instruction: trek overland on foot and by canoe from York Factory on Hudson Bay to determine the latitude and longitude of the north coast of North America and the trending of the coast both east and west. Franklin’s expedition was also directed to record temperature, wind and weather, the aurora borealis, and geomagnetic variations. They were to make drawings of the terrain, the natives, and other things of interest along the way.

First Expedition, 1819 Franklin was a naval officer with no experience canoeing, trekking in the tundra, hunting, or back-packing. The Admiralty simply assumed their officers could meet any demand. So they sent him into the wilds with little experience and a minimum of equipment. He was expected to travel five thousand miles by foot and canoe, picking up provisions at trading posts along the way. He was assured that arrangements for provisions had been made. After only three months planning Franklin and twenty men departed in May, 1819 from York Factory on Hudson Bay. By October they reached Cumberland House trading post where they spent the winter. After the 1820 summer season of travel from Fort Resolution, across Great Slave Lake, and down the Coppermine River the party still had not reached the mouth of the river. Then a serious, unexpected problem arose. Provisions promised by the Hudson’s Bay Company had not been cached at their next winter quarters at Fort Enterprise and the Franklin party was forced to ration their remaining food. In spring of 1821 they continued to the mouth of the Coppermine River. At the mouth of the river Franklin measured latitude and found the coast to be considerably farther south than Samuel Hearne had measured eighty-two years earlier (see Explorer’s Tales, 9/15/2014). Then the expedition proceeded eastward along the coast by canoe for several hundred miles before starting the return journey. By this time they were desperate for food and had great difficulty with their light-weight canoes traveling in the more turbulent coastal water. For the return to Fort Enterprise they chose not to follow the river but instead struck off across the barren treeless tundra with no knowledge of the terrain ahead—in what proved to be a disastrous journey. They hoped the shorter more direct route would hasten them to winter quarters where provisions should be waiting. The party was nearly out of food and the winter gales began in early September. They were reduced to eating berries and lichen, hunted for an occasional deer to revive their energy, but also resorted to eating rotting deer carcasses found along the way. Eventually they were eating leather from their buffalo robes and boots. Because there was almost no wood on the tundra for fuel, most of what was eaten was uncooked. Franklin had a narrow escape when he fell into a torrential stream and later began to have fainting spells from exhaustion. Franklin sent midshipman George Back ahead to find Indians that had agreed to help provide some food. On October 6, 1821 Franklin recorded that the party ate what was left of their old shoes (meaning moccasins of untanned leather) and any other leather they could find. They were now within a few days of Fort Enterprise where they expected to find a cache of food carried in over the summer by agents of the North West Company. Several men stopped to rest because they were too weak to go on. Only Franklin, four voyageurs from the North West Company, and a handful of mariners reached Enterprise. Their intention was to take food and supplies to the men left behind. To their horror they found that no provisions had been brought to Fort Enterprise. All they found were some deerskins, which they roasted over a fire made from floorboards of the log house. For the next weeks they were kept alive on a diet of deer hide, lichen, and an occasional partridge bagged on their hunts. Meanwhile at the camp of those left behind, arguments and shootings resulted in two men being killed. The survivors from that group arrived at Fort Enterprise only to find Franklin and the others in a sad state of emaciation. Three Indians sent by George Back finally arrived in November with some meat. The starved group wolfed down the meat while the Indians built a fire and began caring for the starving men as though they were children. Franklin wrote that “the Indians treated us with the utmost tenderness, gave us their snowshoes, keeping by our sides that they might lift us if we fell.” Of the original party of twenty, eleven had died (two shot, nine starved)—a record held until his third expedition, which was far worse. In July, 1822 Franklin arrived safely in York Factory after having traveled 5,550 miles over land, river, and sea to map 350 miles of the north coast of North America. Franklin arrived home to public acclaim and became a hero. An admiring London press dubbed him, “The man who ate his boots.”

Second Expedition, 1825 Franklin made a second overland journey in 1825. This trip canoed down the Mackenzie River following the route of Alexander Mackenzie. At the mouth of the river his party split to survey the coast in both directions to connect with their previous survey in the east and to reach Icy Cape, Alaska, previously surveyed by Captain Cook in 1778, in the west. Dr. John Richardson, who had been on the first expedition as naturalist and surgeon, volunteered to conduct the survey of the eastern portion, and Franklin would lead the western survey. Lieutenant George Back, who had helped save the first expedition, was also selected for the second trip. That both Richardson and Back volunteered to go with Franklin again after the near disaster of the first trip is strong testimony to their confidence in him. Just as they prepared to leave Franklin received word that his ailing wife in England, Eleanor, had died from tuberculosis, and that one of his sisters looked after the baby, Eleanor. His wife of less than two years had urged him to go on this expedition despite her ill health. Although grieved by this loss, Franklin proceeded on the trip inland from York Factory. This second trip was thoroughly planned and everything went well. No starvation, no deaths, and Franklin did not fall in the river. He had bigger and stronger canoes built to withstand travel and surveying along the coast near the surf. Provisions were provided along the way as planned. Although the eastern survey completed their objective, the western group, led by Franklin, ran into the end of the season before reaching his objective and turning back in August, 1826. Although the trip was a success and no one died, it failed to capture the enthusiasm of the public as had the earlier more perilous and deadly journey. Mackenzie had already navigated the river to the coast and Franklin’s second expedition broke little new ground other than adding some coastline to the map. As the expedition suffered no serious hardships to achieve their goal, public interest was minimal. For his genuine achievements, however, John Franklin received honors. He was knighted in April, 1829, awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford University, and received a gold medal from the Société de Géographie in Paris. We will see in Part Two that Franklin’s third expedition, although carefully planned, had serious flaws leading to disaster. Some flaws resulted from inappropriate planning and equipment, and others from the mindset of the nineteenth century.

SourcesBerton, Pierre. The Arctic Grail: the Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909, New York:Viking Penguin, 1988.

Franklin, John. Narrative to the Shores of the Polar Sea, 1819, 1820, 1821, and 1822. London: John Murray, 1828.

Franklin, John. Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1825, 1826, and 1827, Includes John Richardson. Account of the Progress of a Detachment to the Eastward. Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle. 1971. First printed, 1828

McCoy. Roger M. On The Edge: Mapping North America’s Coasts. New York: Oxford University Press. 2012.

"Explorers' Tales"A blog article is only a starting point in learning about explorers. References with each article provide further reading. Explorer's original journals are especially interesting and are quoted in the blog when possible.